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Women wrestlers grappled for Games

Nordhagen-Vierling leads Canadians in Olympic debut

By ERIC FRANCIS, CALGARY SUN 8/12/04

Despite being a six-time world champion and the most decorated female
wrestler since the Fabulous Moolah, Christine Nordhagen-Vierling has
spent the bulk of her career fighting an opponent she had no chance against:
The IOC. However, after a decade of hoping organizers of the world's
largest sporting event would someday see fit to add women's wrestling to its
long list of obscure sports, the Calgary resident finally had her wish
granted in 2001.

The decision prompted the 33-year-old high school teacher to hold off
on plans to start a family with coach/husband Leigh Vierling, choosing
instead to prolong her grappling career despite knee problems.

A fitting forum for one of Nordhagen-Vierling's final international
appearances, the Ano Liossia Olympic Hall, will play host to her quest
to pin down the first female wrestling gold in Olympic history on Aug. 23.
As if that wasn't compelling enough viewing for Canadians, add the fact
her three highly decorated teammates are also favourites to climb the
podium.

10 NATIONAL TITLES

"When she was in high school I think she was tougher than 50 per cent
of the boys - so this hasn't been a big surprise," said Lillian Nordhagen,
whose five-foot-seven, 160-pound daughter has won 10 national championships
and become the world's most successful female wrestler.

Parlaying a six-week course at the University of Alberta into a 13-year
career unparalleled in her sport, the farmer's daughter from tiny
Valhalla Centre (pop. 57, 50 kilometres from Grande Prairie) has helped pioneer
female wrestling to this, the sport's finest hour. To demonstrate how
far the sport has come, consider the first women's world championships 17
years ago featured entrants from nine countries. That number grew to 41
countries in 2003. Of the 54 nations that took part in Olympic qualifying, 21
earned spots, with Canada being one of only six nations to field a full team
of four.

Inducted into the Canadian Wrestling Hall of Fame five years ago,
Nordhagen-Vierling is already a legend in the sport who has done
everything she can on the mat except savour an Olympic moment. Midway through the
Games the blond high school teacher will partake in her first and last
five-ring experience in the 72-kilogram competition.

While expectations are high that her four matches will culminate with
the crowning achievement of her career, her teammates face similar
pressures against highly touted Japanese and American counterparts.

Lyndsay Belisle, 26, of Burnaby, B.C., is a six-time national champ who
will be one of the favourites in the 48-kilogram weight class by virtue of
her silver at last year's Pan Am Games.

SECOND AT WORLDS

Tonya Verbeek of Beamsville, Ont., who finished second at both the 2003
World Cup and Pan Am Games, will compete in the 55-kilogram weight
class.

Saskatoon's Viola Yanik, 22, finished third at last year's world
championships (63 kilograms) and second at the Pan Am Games, rounding
out a squad that can also draw confidence from Canada's golden boy in Sydney,
Daniel Igali.

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Olympic women take taboos to mat

By ART THIEL 8/12/04
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

ATHENS -- In this town, history is nearly as ubiquitous as the Starbucks empire in Seattle -- chunks are everywhere, be they physical or psychological.

As with Starbucks, aspects of the overdose occasionally are less than glorious.

Take, for example, the ancient Greeks' treatment of women during the original Olympics, a part of the past that gets little chat time in the olive-wreathed run-up to the 2004 Games that commence tomorrow.

In the classical era, Greeks not only forbade Olympic participation by women, they weren't allowed to watch. Violators of the protocol occasionally were tossed from cliffs. After one Olympiad in which a woman sneaked in dressed as a male coach, all coaches and trainers in subsequent festivals were ordered to watch naked.

The dubious precedent dissolved long ago, but this Olympics will provide the finishing touch, thanks to the Games' newest discipline in one of the Greeks' most favored sports.

For the first time in Olympics ancient or modern, women wrestle.

Of course, modern men are little better than their Hellenic predecessors, typically attaching mud and Jell-O to the idea of women wrestlers, who have run the minimalist gamut from the Fabulous Moolah to Chyna.

Any of the four U.S. women here to compete would be happy to take new Americans or old Greeks harboring such thoughts cliffside -- first one hitting the bottom of the canyon loses.

"When we were in New York, the mayor (Michael Bloomberg) introduced us, then made this side comment about naked wrestling," said Patricia Miranda, the U.S. 105-pound champion and, at 5 feet, the smallest American freestyle grappler. "So there is still resistance. Even some of the (U.S.) male wrestlers think, 'Why are you wrestling? You don't need this.' "

As with many things in life, there is often a little-understood distinction between needs and wants. None among Miranda, Tela O'Donnell, Sara McMann and Toccara Montgomery needs this. But, jeez, do they want it.

"I'm sensitive about it," Miranda said. "We have a long way to go to get to the point where we're respected, and not a side joke. Athens is our chance to show we're more than mud wrestling. If people see us on TV for just two minutes, they'll see the sweat and tears and joy that go into it."

Miranda figures that compared to her father, Jose, a Brazilian who is a general-practice physician, winning over America will be kiddie work. Seeing any athletics as a distraction from studies, he went so far as to physically pull her out of practice against the boys at Saratoga (Calif.) High School.

"I told him, 'Dad, you can't quit work every day at 3 p.m. to do this, so I'll be there when you're not,' " she said.

Stubborn as a window painted shut, she brokered a deal with her father -- if she maintained a straight-A average, he would let her pursue wrestling. She did, and the international field is about to reap the Miranda whirlwind.

A two-time silver medalist at the women's world championships, Miranda also completed degrees in economics and international policy at Stanford, where she was a member of the varsity men's team, and has been accepted to Yale Law School, which begins two days after her return from Athens.

To say she is driven is to say snow tends toward white.

"I do this because I want to know about myself," she said. "I want to go to the No. 1 law school and graduate No. 1."

Earlier, she wanted to know something else. She wanted to know if it was true what a high school teammate said about her participation in wrestling: "This," he declared, "is a joke."

"That was the only time that (taunting) really affected me," she said. "I cried like a baby."

Since few school districts and even fewer colleges provide varsity wrestling programs for women, almost all of her matches were against males. In high school, she could occasionally prevail by using her quickness and endurance. But strength became the overwhelming divide in college, where she would go weeks in practice without scoring a point, much less a victory.

With no triumphs on the mat and no support at home -- her mother died at age 40 from an aneurysm, when her daughter was 10 -- there were reasons to conclude the taunter was right.

Miranda has never listened to reason.

"Breaking into an all-male group, it wasn't my intent to make friends and have a great time," she said. "My goal was to outwork everybody."

The dedication won over all of her teammates. Bruised and black-eyed, Miranda was the last one off the mat and out of the weight room. The work paid off when she met her gender in international competition. She was voted the outstanding wrestler at the 2003 Women's World Cup.

She even won over her father, who is now her biggest supporter -- and embarrassed at his earlier reticence.

"Patricia did everything herself," Jose Miranda told The New York Times. "I may be important as a Freudian figure; maybe it was: 'I'm going to beat my father on that.'

"In reality, I feel ashamed that I see parents do much more for their kids in terms of practice. I never did anything."

The daughter is firm that the void only made her tougher.

"I didn't want that comfort from him," she said. "I didn't want that 'out' from my dad."

These Olympics will feature better athletes than Miranda, but it is difficult to imagine one with more perseverance and resilience.

She may get just two minutes of TV fame during the Aug. 22-23 competition, and even that may well escape those looking for mud or Jell-O. But it should not escape the attention of any lingering Greek gods, whose mortal tribes contributed much that lingers today in Western society, but couldn't have been loopier when it came to denying the mat to half the world.

Athena, Goddess of Victory, your daughters rally.

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Women grapple with past in Athens

Posted: Aug. 11, 2004

Athens - At every turn in this dazzling city of paradoxical blends are street signs to remind that the ancient and the modern have once again conjoined.

"Welcome home," they say.

While a Calatrava-inspired stadium rises before the Acropolis as evidence of Greece's neo-revival, nothing more than those two words are required to let a visitor know that the Olympics have returned to their roots of antiquity, when men were gladiatorial and women were afterthoughts in the sphere of athletics.

It wasn't enough that women were barred from competition in ancient Athens. Simply being a spectator was prohibited, with punishment by death quite likely serving as an effective deterrent.

Yet things change, even in the most primordial of Olympic sports that is wrestling. Constant for the ages in its man-on-man struggles at these Games supreme, it took a homecoming of Olympian proportions to finally create a more egalitarian stage for the event. Sisters, they're doing it now.

With competition beginning Aug. 22 in four weight classes, women's freestyle wrestling will become the newest Olympic event for 2004. One of its many faces belongs to Sara McMann of Team USA, who wrestles at 138.75 pounds.

As for the reactions she receives, McMann said, "I don't get many negative experiences, especially from women. They say, 'Really? Good for you.' But some people thought I'd be bigger with two teeth, an ogre with a hunchback."

None of those descriptions applies to the 23-year-old McMann, who wrestled for the men's team while earning a degree in drama at Lock Haven University. She wrestles for the same reason that drives a lot of people toward individual sports, mostly for the sense of individual responsibility it provides.

Toccara Montgomery, who wrestles at 158.5 pounds, the heaviest classification for women, once played all sports, "but I was used to blaming the point guard for not passing the ball or the catcher for not catching the ball," she said. "This focuses everything on my achievements and failures."

Search these Games and you may not find a more rugged individual than Patricia Miranda, a 5-foot, 105.5-pound honors graduate of Stanford University who will attend Yale Law School after the Olympics. Get you daughters to listen to her quest for high achievement.

"In the eighth grade I was ready to have something challenge me," she said. "Wrestling scared me the first day because I knew it would take all of my mind and all of my body to get good. That excited me. The fact that it's a one-on-one combat sport creates accountability and life lessons. Everything you do is your responsibility."

Each competitor for Team USA had stories Wednesday of struggling for acceptance, of boys in high school who refused to wrestle them.

Said coach Townsend Saunders, "I liken them to Jackie Robinson. There will be a time when it will be more acceptable. These girls are pioneers. When medals are wrapped around necks after the Olympics, there will be more opportunities."

In a sport that has given a group of athletes so little with which to succeed, maybe there is no better place than right here where it all began for acceptance to commence.

"We've got a long way to go to gain respect," Miranda said. "Athens is our stage to say, 'Hey, look at us,' but not as a side joke or mud wrestling. See the sweat, see the tears, see the triumph. Why can't a woman wrestle? That's one of the really neat things we get to say from Athens."

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Wrestling With Acceptance

August 12, 2004

ATHENS, Greece -- When some guy yelled out she was a joke, Patricia Miranda already had been elected captain by the boys on her high school wrestling team. She already had struck a deal with a disapproving father to wrestle.

Miranda had been taunted before by opponents and parents. She would be taunted again. But this one time as a junior at Saratoga (Calif.) High was the only time she allowed the words to pierce her.

"I cried like a baby," Miranda, America's tiniest Olympic wrestler, said Wednesday. "Not in front of him, away in the bathroom. I had a particularly bad tournament and it was the one taunt that really affected me. It resonated because there was a good possibility it was true. One of my goals in life is the truth. I had to keep wrestling to know if I was a joke. If I was delusional, I needed to know."

Miranda, 25, says she is thrilled and freaked out to be moving to New Haven. She has delayed her schooling long enough, and two days after she waves goodbye to the world at the Olympic Games Closing Ceremony, Miranda will wave hello to Connecticut.

On Sept. 2, she will register for classes at Yale Law School. The dormitory is taken care of and so is the financial aid. It's no delusion to say all that's left for the 5-foot, 105-pound freestyle wrestler is to pack an Olympic medal.

"I have a lot of people telling me, `You can win this thing. You can be the best in the world. You can be on top in the U.S. for a long time. Why don't you enjoy the view?' I tried to explain it doesn't excite me. I want to explore myself. I want to know if I can do this and then go to the No.1 ranked law school and graduate at the top of the class.

"The idea of reaching the peak of one mountain and then being a nobody again, starting at the base of another mountain, if I can live my entire life like that, I'll be the luckiest person in the world."

Townsend Saunders, the 1996 freestyle silver medalist in Atlanta, married the greatest American wrestler never to get a chance to be an Olympian. Tricia Saunders also is one of the 2004 Olympic coaches, and Townsend's voice filled with emotion Wednesday when he called Miranda and her three teammates "pioneers." This is the first time women will wrestle in the Olympics, and Townsend was moved to compare them to Jackie Robinson. His point is many folks still don't believe women should be allowed to compete, either.

"Athens is our stage to say, `Hey, look at us. Look at us as more than a sideshow or to think about us mud-wrestling,'" Miranda said. "Look at us and see our sweat, see our tears, see the triumph that is sport. It is as intense as any male sport.

"I'm not going to get in people's faces and say, `I'm in a legitimate sport because I'm in the Olympics.' No, if somebody turns their TV on at home to watch for longer than two minutes, they'll see our pain and happiness and everything we love about watching athletics. It's not that every woman has to wrestle, or that every girl should. It's that every girl in America can know she can."

Phi Beta Kappa at Stanford, bachelor's in economics, a master's in international policy, an international master of wrestling, yep, Yale's got a big-time barrister on the way.

Miranda started wrestling in eighth grade. Her mom, Lia, had died a few years earlier of a brain aneurysm, and Miranda was searching for herself.

"I tried soccer for a very long time," she said. "I'm probably the worst Brazilian [descent] soccer player ever. I dance terrible, too. I've got no rhythm.

"The first day of wrestling tryouts scared me so much I knew it was something that would take all of me, all my mind, all my body, in order to be good."

The accountability, the responsibility, the ownership of a job well done, each life lesson excited Miranda. None of it excited her father, Jose, a doctor and heartbroken widower trying to parent four children. When she was a freshman, Jose, a family practitioner, would drive to school and pull her out of practice.

"Get in the car," Miranda said, mimicking her father's voice. "We're going home."

Jose even threatened to sue the school district.

"They're like, `You might sue us if we won't let her, but what case are you going to bring if we let her wrestle?'" Miranda said. "That didn't go far. With him it wasn't a gender issue. It was an academic issue. He had the immigrant impression that education is your salvation. He was afraid the books would go out the window."

At last, they struck an uneasy compromise. If she got straight A's, she could wrestle.

"He got his 4.0," Miranda said. "I got what I wanted."

She won lots of matches against boys in high school. They were smaller. They hadn't reached puberty. When she got to Stanford, it was different.

"I competed every year in open tournaments and lost every match for four years," Miranda said. "Before I wrestled, spectators would come up to me and say, `I really hope you don't get hurt.'"

Every night at Stanford, she wrote down a goal. Sometimes it was only to score one point in practice. Every day she fought to the end.

"Breaking into a male room is an art," Miranda said. "I knew the only way to get their respect was to outwork everyone. It took a season and a half, but eventually guys came around. They saw I was serious."

Teammate Levi Weikel-Magden was also smitten. They began to date. A law student, Levi spent this summer at Colorado Springs helping Miranda train. Yes, female wrestlers can have boyfriends and work out together.

"Sometimes people anticipate we have two teeth and are some ogre-looking thing with a hunchback," said Sara McMann, Miranda's 138-pound Olympic teammate.

Conversely, they're names aren't all Destiny and Champagne and they don't roll around in Jell-O.

"We were honored by the mayor of New York once," Miranda said, "and he made a side comment about naked wrestling. When someone so well respected, if that's what comes to his mind, you've got to think the average American is still thinking about it."

There are 20 times more female wrestlers than there were in 1991. The average American and the NCAA will be forced to take notice at some point.

Jose Miranda has. He'll be in Athens.

"I knew he'd really come over to see my side when I called him right after the world championships," said Miranda, who plans to focus on arbitration at Yale. "I'd reapplied for a fellowship that I had turned down to prepare for the Olympics. I had to tell him they didn't give it back to me. He had wanted to retire. I felt so bad. But he told me I had made the right choice. He said, `We'll find a way to pay for law school.'

"In life, I don't like winner-take-all, even though I like that on the mat. I like the idea that people can come to a consensus, that they find forgiveness in seeing each other's points."

Great pioneers think that way. Great thinkers pioneer that way.

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U.S. women wrestlers know they have long road
With their sport making its Olympic debut, they realize acceptance will be tough.

By Gary R. Blockus 8/12/04
Of The Morning Call

ATHENS, Greece | Patricia Miranda stared straight at the reporter asking the question and issued a lengthy reply that may ring even louder over the next four years.

''Yeah, there's a long way to go, even in our own sport, to gain recognition,'' said Miranda, one of four women who comprise the U.S. women's wrestling team for the Athens Games.

It is the first time women will be allowed to compete in a sport that served as a genesis for the original Olympic Games almost three millennia ago.

Miranda, who wrestles in the 48-kilogram class, is not the only person who feels that way about women's wrestling. It is not mud wrestling. It is not WWE Wrestling. This is blood-and-pain, tears-and-glory wrestling, and many people associated with the U.S. women feel they have taken a short shrift from the U.S. men.

''As a coach, everybody always asks me why women's wrestling,'' coach Terry Steiner said. ''I always answer why not.

''I've never said this before, but if I asked another coach — any coach — at the end of their career why they've coached, and they answer 'I believe in the sport,' 'I believe in what it teaches, the life skills they carry on to the rest of their lives.' If that's what they really believe, then why does it matter men or women?''

Notice, if you will, that when Steiner spoke of coaches, he never used the word ''he.''

But that isn't an indictment of all male wrestlers. Heck, the men have been donning Olympic laurels and gold medals since the inception of the Games.

''Sergei believes that,'' Steiner said of Sergei Beleglazov, the former multiple world champion from the Soviet Union who served as an assistant coach at Lehigh before eventually serving with the U.S. men's team.

''It's funny, but the bigger guys will help us,'' said Sara McMann, the 63-kilo representative for the U.S. who has lifted in the weight room at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado with Parkland High graduate Jon Trenge. He took last year off from Lehigh University's and lived as a resident athlete at the OTC in hopes of making the 2004 U.S. Olympic freestyle team.

''He's big, but he'll help,'' she continued. ''Even Kerry McCoy will come in and work technique with us.''

McCoy, of course, is the current Lehigh University assistant coach, and head coach of the Lehigh Valley Athletic Club, who will represent the U.S. as the freestyle heavyweight during the final few days of the Athens Games.

The U.S. women went through their official first workout on Tuesday, then met with the media on Wednesday to discuss being part of Olympic history as the first women's wrestlers to compete in the Olympics.

While Miranda, McMann, Tela O'Donnell (55 kilos) and Toccara Montgomery (72 kilos) were steered into talking about their lack of respect from the men, they were more than willing to talk about what makes them different, too.

Like when they walked into Madison Square Garden last September for the parade of athletes prior to the 2003 World Championships. Miranda, McMann and Kristie Marano openly hugged, smiled and mugged for the cameras like you'd expect to see from the women's gymnastics team. The men showed no such camaraderie for each other.

''I think, for the women, that the team aspect of the sport is very important, even though it's a very individual sport,'' Steiner said. ''The other thing they do, and I think it's very important for them, is they give it a healthy balance, even in the most tense of times. I don't think sequestering the girls is the best thing. They're very social.

''What you saw last year at worlds in one weekend moved the sport forward more than the entire last 15 years. I wish more people could have seen that.''

The U.S. women won a medal in each of the seven weight classes at the 2003 World Championships, including one gold and four silver.

Now, on an even bigger stage than New York City, and with the international competition reduced to just four weight classes for Athens, the focus is on not just on gaining the spotlight, but capturing it the way the landmark Parthenon does at nighttime.

It's a long, uphill road to ascend that mountain.

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Lanesboro's Darrow captures national wrestling title in N.D.

By Scott Barrett 8/12/04
Berkshire Eagle Staff

Nikki Darrow couldn't have asked for a better Sweet 16 present. Just seven days before her birthday, the rising junior at Mount Greylock secured her third national wrestling title and earned All-America status at the Women's Junior National Championships in Fargo, N.D.
A 5-4 victory over Wisconsin's Sarah Peasley gave Darrow, a Lanesboro resident who represents her wrestling club in Albany, N.Y., her first Junior Division title. She outlasted 32 competitors in the 119-pound weight division, winning six matches in total. In four of the matches, Darrow registered a technical fall (beating an opponent by more than 10 points).

Darrow, who has won two Cadet Division titles, finished third at this tournament a year ago. But she says that over the past year she has become a smarter, more self-assured wrestler when she steps onto the mat.

"For me, it's all about confidence," she said. "I feel more confident than I did a year ago. I'm more comfortable with myself, I know what I need to do and I'm able to go out there and do it."

The Mountie actually trailed Peasley 3-2 in the second period, but scored a one-point takedown and two points for back exposure to earn the victory. In the tournament semifinals, Darrow pinned a 10-4 defeat on Oklahoma's Cheyenne Stokes, who usually wrestles at the weight class above Darrow's.

"She was, like, my hero," Darrow said of Stokes. "I was real surprised when I beat her. I gave her a hug afterward, but when we were on the mat, it was all business. Beating her definitely gave me confidence for the rest of the tournament."

Before the meet, Darrow was named to TheMat.com/Asics Girls High School All-America first team, one of only 14 girls to earn the honor of the estimated 5,500 who wrestle at the scholastic level nationally.

The victory at the Junior National Championship caps off quite year for Darrow, who also took first at the United States Girls Wrestling Association (USGWA) High School Nationals in St. Joseph, Minn., in March. But Darrow's biggest concern heading into her junior season is winning a Western Massachusetts crown with the Mounties.

The 112-pounder has been close -- she advanced to the finals at 103 as a freshman and lost in the semifinals at 112 this past winter -- but that sectional title has always seemed to elude her. A victory would make her the first female to win a Western Mass. title at any weight class.

"I'm still craving that title," Darrow said. "Everyone goes out thinking they are the best at their weight class, but it comes down to who is the best on that day. Hopefully, I'll be the best when it counts."

If anyone has the work ethic it takes to win a sectional title, it's Darrow. Monday through Thursday, Darrow makes the trek to Albany to train at her wrestling club. She doesn't get home until nearly 10 p.m. each night. On Fridays, Darrow participates in an open wrestling night at Lanesboro Elementary School. She's been all over the country -- and even out of the county -- to compete in wrestling tournament.

Yet, as a Mount Greylock honor roll student, her grades do not suffer. Aside from being one of the top wrestlers in the county and the country, Darrow is also a member of the Mountie girls' cross country team, which finished second at Western Mass. last year.

But clearly, wrestling is her first love. Next year, Darrow will move up to the Senior Division where she hopes to one day compete for a spot on the 2008 U.S. Olympic team. Women's wrestling is making it's debut at the Athens Olympics, and only four Americans make the team. Darrow knows what it's going to take to compete at the highest level.

"I'm going to have to be more aggressive," she said. "I'm a little too conservative. I need to go all out and not be afraid to make mistakes."

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